So what's the secret?

[Mr. Fahrenheit]

I've been playing this game for a bit now and it's just very inconsistent. When I play marines a skulk can jump up in my face and kill me so fast it's almost instant yet when I play aliens I can completely get the drop on a marine and I damage him so slow he has time to turn around and kill me before I can even get a second bite in.

Same thing goes for marines. I can put about half a magazine in a skulk who proceeds to kill me anyway and yet when I'm a skulk a few stray bullets clip me and I'm a goner. This happens even early game before either side has damage/armor upgrades. Is there headshots, does biting or shooting heads deal extra damage? Why do my enemies feel more powerful than I am when I play that side.

It's so frustrating when an enemy skulk can dive through the air head-on at me like an ugly cruise missle, absorb all my bullets, and proceed to instantly kill me when I die if a marine so much unclicks the safety on his gun in a threatening manner toward me.

[Vitdom]

If you parasite a marine without armor upgrades, you kill him in 2 bites. This is why you should always upgrade armor 1 asap as marine commander.

[Major.Pain]

Its down to the netcode my friend for a game this fast it is not up to the task.
You need to be on servers where EVERYBODY has a decent ping to offset this as much as possible but it will still be there regardless.
If you have high ping players the difference between what you see on your screen and what your opponent sees is not time synced.
For example he may see you on his screen but your screen has not updated yet and is a X miliseconds behind you can not see him yet so he is reacting to something you are not yet aware of.
I am not aware of a fix for this and its something you have to live with unless the netcode is ever reworked but i beleive its inherent within the custom engine the game runs on.

[dePARA]

I told you 2 times already that you should post a video of your gameplay.
If we see what you are doing wrong, we can give you some tips.

[Rammler]

Originally posted by dePARA:

I told you 2 times already that you should post a video of your gameplay.
If we see what you are doing wrong, we can give you some tips.

+1.

Also ns2 is all about landing your bites and your shots. as a skulk your bite accuarcy should never be below 60 and marine shoot accuracy never below 20.

when u are not hitting your bites the marine has more time to shoot at u and wil probably win the engagement.

[gay test acnt 14]

tldr: You aren't very good at games, and some people casually play at a level much higher than you do without even trying their best.

Some people played GoldSRC and mods back in the day such as Team Fortress, Counter-Strike(original), Natural Selection, etc.. which required more skill and yet were more fun than today's braindead games. CSGO and major examples of popular games today try to obtain as much money as possible through a virtual market of skins, allowing hacking, and allowing public profiteering of others. That is, they tend to cater to cheaters, virtual skins, toxicity, egoism, children, and bad psychological traits that are inherent in children. they market these things because it works to generate over a million dollars from a 20$ game.

Let's face it: games that portray you as a hero when you play on easy mode are appealing to a much larger audience, but it deludes way too many people nowadays along with everything else.

It used to be fun and M meant at least 17+ and "Mature" on a game. Just because you can't do things doesn't mean that others can't; some people can b-hop or use movement well almost subconciously.

NS2 seems fun to hop on sometimes and I can generally keep a positive score especially after warming up. The community always good and "mature". People won't be as receptive to someone like yourself who whines and creates toxicity (basically just a liability) versus someone who simply is completely new, plays, learns, and gets better at it properly. Some people learn faster than others. No need to get mad about that. It's "Natural Selection" lol. New players never beat chess players at chess when they first sat down. No offense intended, but some people can never have the mental capacity to beat gifted chess players, why shouldn't it be the same online?

As alien: stop running in straight lines, time and hit your bites if you get close. As marine: keep distance and try to 'persistantly' hit, not just hit randomly for 0.1 seconds.

Games used to have plenty of this whereas nowadays you might just think you are good by buying an XBox, playing games where 1 bullet in a fully automatic weapon takes 1/2 of your health, and listening to marketting strategies that simply tell you that you are good when you are just being given an easier or "more accessible" medium for it. It isn't that frustrating, just try to help your team.

[RenegadeFerret]

Your ability to win a fight comes down to predicting the enemy. Top players know all the tiny, fraction of a second maneuvers that their opponent will make. They also know how much play they have between biting/reloading to dodge the enemy's attack. The more you have these encounters, the more you will pick up on the subtleties to outplay your opponents, such as where to move and where to aim during every split second in the fight.

Some general things you could try working on:

Marines
- Position yourself with a long line of site to the alien's path of attack. The longer they have to run, the more opportunity you have to shoot them.
- Burst fire your rifle, your goal is to not miss any shots, and to not reload in an encounter. A marine who always goes full auto is easy pickens for a skulk.
- When you see an alien, stand still and use only your mouse to shoot that alien as he tries to run towards you. Think of yourself as a stationary turret. When the alien gets in bite range, side step and start dodging. This will help your aiming, and help you learn how aliens like to move.
- Crouch to move silently, it will catch aliens off guard.

Skulk
- Move silently to gain ground on the enemy before they see you. I recommend upgrading Silence over Celerity.
- Wall jump around the map as fast as possible, use wall jumping to retain your speed (watch guides if you don't know how to do this). If you have initally quick movement speed, when you charge a marine they will have less time to react.
- Survive until the marine has to reload. Get in his line of site and immediately dodge his attacks. Move sporatically on the walls, ceiling and ground until he has to reload, then go in for the kill. If you have a partner skulk, while one dodges the other attacks, whoever the marine is focused on should dodge.
- Running away from a losing-fight is a good thing, the marines will still worry about you and be distracted by you. If you have regeneration you can quickly gain full health while retreating. Or when the marines run away, you can attack their structures.

It just takes time to learn the tiny details. When I hit 100 hours of gameplay I felt like I understood the basics. Only after I had 1000+ hours was I confident enough to say I am a "Good" NS2 player.

[Quack Legion]

The "secret" is simply practice and learn the game. Theres a lot of factors in why you could be losing fights but from what you've said, honestly it just sounds like you need to play more. People have posted some good tips, but skill with this game comes with time. You can't just jump in and be amazing at it, not that kind of game.

[Big Boss]

Originally posted by ESLeg:

tldr: You aren't very good at games, and some people casually play at a level much higher than you do without even trying their best.

Some people played GoldSRC and mods back in the day such as Team Fortress, Counter-Strike(original), Natural Selection, etc.. which required more skill and yet were more fun than today's braindead games. CSGO and major examples of popular games today try to obtain as much money as possible through a virtual market of skins, allowing hacking, and allowing public profiteering of others. That is, they tend to cater to cheaters, virtual skins, toxicity, egoism, children, and bad psychological traits that are inherent in children. they market these things because it works to generate over a million dollars from a 20$ game.

Let's face it: games that portray you as a hero when you play on easy mode are appealing to a much larger audience, but it deludes way too many people nowadays along with everything else.

It used to be fun and M meant at least 17+ and "Mature" on a game. Just because you can't do things doesn't mean that others can't; some people can b-hop or use movement well almost subconciously.

NS2 seems fun to hop on sometimes and I can generally keep a positive score especially after warming up. The community always good and "mature". People won't be as receptive to someone like yourself who whines and creates toxicity (basically just a liability) versus someone who simply is completely new, plays, learns, and gets better at it properly. Some people learn faster than others. No need to get mad about that. It's "Natural Selection" lol. New players never beat chess players at chess when they first sat down. No offense intended, but some people can never have the mental capacity to beat gifted chess players, why shouldn't it be the same online?

As alien: stop running in straight lines, time and hit your bites if you get close. As marine: keep distance and try to 'persistantly' hit, not just hit randomly for 0.1 seconds.

Games used to have plenty of this whereas nowadays you might just think you are good by buying an XBox, playing games where 1 bullet in a fully automatic weapon takes 1/2 of your health, and listening to marketting strategies that simply tell you that you are good when you are just being given an easier or "more accessible" medium for it. It isn't that frustrating, just try to help your team.

Found the autist with no empathy for others lol. Look up the Dunning Kruger effect some time.

[Ronnie]

Originally posted by Big Boss of Krampus:

Found the autist with no empathy for others lol. Look up the Dunning Kruger effect some time.

Nice, call him out for (what you perceive as) unnecessarily insulting behavior, and call him an "autist" at the same time. Constructive.

[Bucketsmith]

This game does have poor netcode. You can have a ping of 20ms and be around the corner entirely and still die.
It's almost as if the game uses client-side hit registration and it reminded me a lot of how BF3 is.

Anyways, if you're running into these sort of issues, the number one thing to do is to realise there are other parts you can focus on to still have a positive impact on the team.
- Make sure you always buy a welder, except when you're going for a solo goal that has a high possibility of you dying (like trying to defend a close-by resource tower on your own vs multiple aliens)
- Tag along with others. This is the number one mistake I see being made by players of all "skill" level. They can kill well, but they have poor idea of the game. There's strength in numbers in this game.
You increase the damage output during a combat scenario, you increase the number of targets the other team has to take out/aim for, increasing overall survivability for your team, and if you tag along with a good player, you can tag along on their success. Be the bait, be a distraction, or make sure they go in first with their superior dodging skills so you get it easier trying to kill the enemy.
- Focus on other parts; building ♥♥♥♥, repairing ♥♥♥♥, trying to sneak to places for a sneaky phase gate or gorge tunnel. This is all immensely valuable and can often make or break a match. And it requires no killing, by definition.
- Play on servers with a solid community of regulars that don't ♥♥♥♥♥ and moan on every mistake they see others make. Like with any game that has an online part to it, there will be players that have poor social skills. They drastically affect the mood of a server.

[Jerubius]

Originally posted by Bucketsmith:

- Tag along with others. This is the number one mistake I see being made by players of all "skill" level. They can kill well, but they have poor idea of the game. There's strength in numbers in this game.
You increase the damage output during a combat scenario, you increase the number of targets the other team has to take out/aim for, increasing overall survivability for your team, and if you tag along with a good player, you can tag along on their success. Be the bait, be a distraction, or make sure they go in first with their superior dodging skills so you get it easier trying to kill the enemy.

Adding onto this, don't bunch up when you do go together. I see it all the time where a skulk pack gets cut in half before even making it into attack range because they were too bunched up. Or marines pushes get wiped because a skulk or two got in the middle of them and just started biting.

As marines, stand right around 10ft away from everyone else. Remember, the game doesn't have friendly fire, and skulks are usually a lot easier to shoot when they are focused on biting down another marine. Plus, if another marine does die, you don't want to already be in attack range of his killer. If you have a coordinated team, the person in front should act as bait and focus more on dodging than shooting, confident his teammates can mop up anything that gets close so long as he stays alive. Welders, and a commander who is on point with medpacks, can greatly increase how well this tactic works. Things get a little harder when fades show up, but shotguns in general make fades nervous, because even noobs land a clean hit once and a while, and it doesn't take too many clean shotty blasts to take down a fade. Later flamethrowers and grenades used in moderation can be great deterrents for fades, or even kill fades who get to greedy. In fact, one flamer per group is generally a good idea when you can afford it. However, they need other weapons to really shine, and unless it is a really big group, you are usually better with just the base gun than grabbing a second flamethrower.

As aliens, work on flanking and setting up ambushes. When marines see aliens in front of them, coming in from behind is practically free kills. When you are moving with others, give them a wide berth. Last thing you want to have happen is for them to dodge and you to take all the hits instead. When you are more coordinated, send someone in first to focus on dodging while the others in the group close the distance. Also remember that marines will chase gorges through hell and back if they see one. This makes lone gorges very sad, but smart gorges with good teams can use this to their advantage. As a skulk, remember to support your gorges, and watch as the free kills stack up as marines drop everything to hunt that gorge and completely fail to see you drop down on top of them. And as a gorge, remember to support your skulk packs. Getting a near dead skulk back into the fight quickly can turn an engagement around. Additionally, flinging a few spitballs into distracted marines can net you a few kills, even in the late game. Though in the late game, you are usually the least valuable target as a gorge. Use this to your advantage to harass players who ignore you for the juicier targets, or sacrifice yourself to protect more valuable lifeforms from those still experiencing gorge madness.

[Major.Pain]

^^
" Also remember that marines will chase gorges through hell and back if they see one."

Made me laugh, i only have get a sniff of one and I'm off lol :)

[Bucketsmith]

As with any team game, a lot is dependant on how well you and your teammates are.
You can know about all of the little tricks and tactics but if you're not confident in your own or your teammates individual skills then trying to do any of the "advanced" things is a near guaranteed fail.

Most importantly; stop caring about statistics, because it's a flawed system that doesn't tell you anything.
Deaths are just deaths in statistics, whilst the situation and the choices made are not respresented. The latter being the only important information.
Sometimes, sacrificing yourself means all the difference.
Imagine playing on the aliens as a skulk and going to one of the bases of marines to get them to beacon back. The chance that you'll die is huge, but having their entire team warp back to a single room on the map means your alien teammates sometimes get a guaranteed success rate on destroying other bases/phasegates/resourcetowers/etc.

Likewise as a marine, it is sometimes better to buy nothing, not even a welder, and rush to try and save the nearest resource tower. The chance you'll die might be great, but delaying the destruction so other teammates can come in for the kill could mean saving the RT, which could make or break the game in some situations.